Ipce Magazine # 6 - Theme: Civil Commitments

February 2013

This article examines how civil commitment
has been rolled out in the case of the sex offender, and focuses on the
implementation of the program in the US and the controversy that has
been spawned as a result.

The article uses the phrase ‘civil
commitment centre’ to denote facilities that house sex offenders who
have served their prison sentence, but who are deemed to have a ‘mental
abnormality’ that renders them a danger to society.

The term ‘mental disorder’ has been
expanded therefore to include ‘mental abnormality’, to enable sex
offenders to be committed civilly.

Civil commitment centres work towards
treating the offender, with the ultimate goal of releasing him under
supervision back to the community once he has been ‘cured’.

Involuntary commitment, civil confinement or civil commitment,
is a legal process through which an individual with symptoms of severe
mental illness is court-ordered into treatment in a hospital (inpatient)
or in the community (outpatient). In most jurisdictions, civil
commitment is specifically applied to individuals found to be suffering
from a mental illness that impairs their reasoning ability to such an
extent that the laws, state or courts find that decisions must or should
be made for them under a legal framework.

A common reason given for civil commitment is to prevent danger to
the individual or society. People with suicidal thoughts may act on
these thoughts and harm or kill themselves. People with psychoses are
occasionally driven by their delusions or hallucinations to harm
themselves or others. People with certain types of personality disorders
can occasionally present a danger to themselves or others.

This concern has found expression in the standards for civil
commitment as the "danger to self or others" standard,
sometimes supplemented by the requirement that the danger be
"imminent." In some jurisdictions, the "danger to self or
others" standard has been broadened in recent years to include
need-for-treatment criteria such as "gravely disabled."

Historically, all committals to public psychiatric facilities and
most committals to private ones were involuntary. More recently, there
have been alternating trends towards the abolition or substantial
reduction of civil commitment, a trend known as "de-institutionalisation."

The impact of civil commitment on the right of self-determination has
been a cause of concern. Critics of civil commitment have advocated that
"the due process protections provided to criminal defendants"
be extended to them. For example, the Libertarian Party in the US
opposes the practice, and the anti-psychiatry movement has also been
prominent in challenging civil commitment. Other individuals have
opposed civil commitment, as it is applied in the US, on the bases that
they claim it violates the Fifth Amendment in a number of ways,
particularly its privilege against self-incrimination, as the
psychiatrically examined individual may not be free to remain silent,
and such silence may actually be used as "proof" of his
"mental illness".

source: self

This article examines how civil commitment has been rolled out in the
case of the sex offender, and focuses on the implementation of the
program in the US and the controversy that has been spawned as a result.
The article uses the phrase ‘civil commitment centre’ to denote
facilities that house sex offenders who have served their prison
sentence, but who are deemed to have a ‘mental abnormality’ that
renders them a danger to society. The term ‘mental disorder’ has
been expanded therefore to include ‘mental abnormality’, to enable
sex offenders to be committed civilly. Civil commitment centres work
towards treating the offender, with the ultimate goal of releasing him
under supervision back to the community once he has been ‘cured’.

In many countries, public revulsion towards sex offenders -
particularly those who abuse children - has led to harsher sentencing.
Since April 2005, judges in England and Wales have been able to impose
indeterminate sentences on dangerous convicted criminals, including some
sex offenders. Similar provisions exist under Canadian law. In the
Australian state of Queensland, sex offenders can be imprisoned
indefinitely, subject to an assessment made after they have served some
time in jail.

In the pre- and post-WWII era, about half of the states in the US had
sex offender laws targeting those suffering mental disorders, be they
ascribed to a disease or defect. These laws permitted courts to confine
those convicted of sex crimes to indeterminate sentences. In the 1960s
and 1970s, these laws were challenged by calls for determinate
sentencing.

Americans have never been comfortable with indeterminate sentencing,
especially for non-criminal behaviour. The one area long acceptable for
civil confinement concerned a person who was assessed by medical experts
as either suffering from a mental disorder, or being dangerous to him-
or her-self, or to others. In 1990, Washington enacted the first state
law to formalize civil commitment. In the intervening period, it has
sought 208 confinements and secured 135 of them.

The policy was legitimized in 1992 when the US Supreme Court held
that a person who had served his or her criminal sentence could not be
further confined for merely being dangerous in the absence of a proven
mental disorder. However, facing the growing politicisation of sex
offenders in the 1990s, especially what came to be called the
"violent sexual predator," legislators throughout the country
moved aggressively to maximize the term of their imprisonment and, if
offenders do get out of jail, severely regulate their lives after
prison.

One method employed was to expand the definition of mental disorder
to encompass the less precise condition of "mental
abnormality" (like paedophilia). This was enough to meet a standard
to qualify someone for commitment.

In 1997 in a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld this new
nomenclature in the Kansas versus Hendricks decision, arguing that
mental abnormality was a constitutionally permissible basis for civil
confinement of a dangerous sex offender, and that such confinement was civil,
not punitive, because it was to be accompanied by therapeutic
treatment for the offender.

"We have never held that the Constitution prevents a state
from civilly detaining those for whom no treatment is available, but
who nevertheless pose a danger to others," Justice Clarence
Thomas wrote for the majority, later adding, "By furnishing such
treatment, the Kansas Legislature has indicated that treatment, if
possible, is at least an ancillary goal of the act, which easily
satisfies any test for determining that the act is not punitive."

Since then, state officials, civil liberties advocates and lawyers
have wrestled with exactly what that treatment requirement means.

"There's no question about it," Professor Janus of
William Mitchell College said, "It's a very murky area of the
law."

Since the Kansas ruling in 1997, the courts have indicated that
states have "wide latitude" when it comes to treatment for the
civilly confined, meaning that unsuccessful treatment alone or an
untreatable patient would not be enough to undo the laws.

In 2001, the Supreme Court decided the case of a civilly committed
man in Washington State, who argued that the conditions he was being
held under were so punitive and the treatment so inadequate as to amount
to a second criminal sentence. The court ruled against the man.

A year later, in 2002, the Supreme Court made clear the limits of who
may be committed by states, saying the authorities must prove not just
that an offender is still dangerous and likely to commit more crimes,
but also that he or she has a "serious difficulty in controlling
behaviour."

Some civil libertarians and prisoner advocates, who still object to
the laws, have not given up on finding a challenge that the Supreme
Court might view favourably. Despite the court rulings, these groups
insist civil commitment amounts to a second sentence for a crime.

Summary of process leading to civil commitment in the US:

Convicts, not necessarily all charged with sexual crimes, are
identified by state criminal justice agencies as "sex offenders
requiring civil management."

The state Office of Mental Health evaluates prisoners. If they
meet the criteria of a sex offender who bears watching, the Office
of Mental Health notifies the attorney general’s office.

The state attorney general files a civil suit, making the case in
state Supreme Court that the prisoner needs to be monitored by the
state after being released from prison.

If a judge finds "probable cause" to believe that the
person is a sex offender, the case proceeds to a civil trial with
the state trying to prove that the prisoner has a "mental
abnormality" that makes it likely he’ll commit sex offenses
after being released.

If the jury decides the prisoner is a sex offender who’s likely
to commit more crimes, the judge can confine the prisoner to a state
mental hospital, or order strict supervision outside an institution,
a regimen described in criminal justice circles as
"super-parole."

source: self - So
in effect the members of the jury are being asked to assume the role of
psychologists.

By May 2006, 3646 individuals were being held in the US under civil
commitment laws, according to the most recent survey, conducted by Adam
Deming of the Indiana Sex Offender Management and Monitoring Program in
Indianapolis. Of these,

2627 had been committed as dangerous sexual predators, while the
other

1019 were waiting for their evaluations to be completed.

Few can expect to be released any time soon. Just 427 of 3493
offenders detained since 1990 had been released by 2004, according to a
survey by Roxanne Lieb of the Washington State Institute for Public
Policy in Olympia.

By March 2007, twenty US states had enacted laws regarding civil
commitment of sexual offenders.

[*1] Massachusetts figures include those committed since 1999; it excludes
those committed earlier under a different law. [*2] Nebraska figures include those committed since July 2006; it excludes
those committed earlier under a different law.

[*3] New Hampshire’s law was passed in 2006; this program is in its
infancy.

Supporters of the civil commitment laws in the US offer no apologies
for their shortcomings, insisting that the money is well spent. Born out
of the anguish that followed a handful of high-profile sex crimes in the
1980s, the laws are proven and potent vote-getters that have withstood
constitutional challenges.

While the details of civil commitment laws vary from state to state,
the US Supreme Court has ruled that civil commitment can be applied only
to convicted sex criminals who have a mental disorder that makes
them likely to commit further sexually violent acts.

This is where the problems begin, as many sex offenders do not easily
fit any of the categories defined in the psychiatrists' bible, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published
by the American Psychiatric Association.

The DSM lists a range of what are known as paraphilias: intense sexually arousing fantasies,
sexual urges or behaviours that recur over a period of at least six months.

Sexual sadism and paedophilia fall under this heading, yet only a
small minority of rapists have sadistic fantasies, and even persistent
child abusers may not be sufficiently fixated on sex with children to
qualify as paedophiles, according to a strict interpretation of the DSM.

Some observers, including Lieb, argue the fault lies with the DSM for
providing too narrow a definition of paraphilia. Critics of civil
commitment argue that some offenders are being shoehorned into diagnoses
that do not apply, to satisfy the Supreme Court's requirement to allow
them to be detained.

Psychiatrists stress that being a sexual offender does not
necessarily make you mentally ill according to any recognised criteria.
Michael First, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York and an
adviser on the DSM, argues that diagnoses made for the purpose of civil
commitment proceedings often confuse persistent criminal behaviour
with mental illness.

"The behaviour itself is not enough to make the
diagnosis," he says.

Of 2082 diagnoses recorded by Deming in his survey,

1135 detainees had been marked down as paedophiles, while

692 were evaluated as belonging to the catch-all category of
"paraphilia (not otherwise specified)".

Six states failed to provide Deming with the particular paraphilia
diagnoses used to detain offenders.

Eric Janus of the William Mitchell College of Law in St Paul,
Minnesota, claims that diagnoses are open to manipulation. He has
studied men detained under Minnesota's civil commitment laws.

Just 25 per cent of those committed in 1993 were diagnosed with a
paraphilia, but

by 1996 the figure for newly committed men was more than 90 per
cent.

By 2001, 97 per cent of all men held under civil commitment in
Minnesota were judged to be paraphilic, including a substantial
proportion that was not given this diagnosis when they were first
detained.

These are not the only questions being raised about the consistency
of diagnoses.

Jill Levenson, who studies criminal justice policy at Lynn University
in Boca Raton, Florida, compared the diagnoses made by different
professional psychiatric evaluators for nearly 300 offenders assessed
under that state's civil commitment law. In general, she was encouraged
by the level of agreement.

In 85 per cent of cases, two evaluators agreed on whether or not
an offender was a paedophile.

When it came to a diagnosis of "paraphilia (not otherwise
specified)" however, her survey revealed the level of agreement
fell to 68 per cent.

"No one is quite sure what counts as a mental disorder,"
Janus argues.

If no one can be sure of that, how can courts rely on psychiatric
diagnoses to incarcerate offenders who have served their sentence?

Virginia allows prosecutors to petition to place sex offenders in a
civil commitment centre when they're released from prison. The procedure
has been billed as a way to keep the worst offenders out of society, but
that standard is determined by a psychological evaluation, so even
first-time offenders can end up as targets.

The total number of civil commitment petitions in Virginia has more
than doubled in the past two years, from 43 to 119, and the number of
men committed to a special institution for sexually violent predators
has tripled, from 16 to 49. The number will likely continue to increase
as the state not only pursues more cases, but also expands the list of
crimes that trigger a sexual offender evaluation. In anticipation, the
state is constructing a $62 million, 300-bed facility to house them.

"Statewide, lawyers are just beginning to handle these
things," said Virginia lawyer Stuart Pearson.

He called the process strange, because it's based on predictions that
the released convict will commit another crime.

"You're punishing them based on the percentage chance that
they're going to do something again in the future."

Salem lawyer Mark Claytor, suggested that the civil commitment law be
called "the Gulag statute," a reference to the brutal prisons
and labour camps of the former Soviet Union. The law

"is cloaked with civil procedural requirements, but it has all
of the hallmarks of a criminal proceeding," said Virginia lawyer
Chris Kowalczuk.

The parameters under which commitment in Minnesota is allowed are
expanding, raising the prospect of an increasing numbers of people
locked up indefinitely.

Some patients have been detained, first in prison and then in the
civil commitment facility, since they were juveniles. Two didn't
actually commit a sex crime; they were there for sexual obsession
and stalking and the fear that they could rape or
molest someone.

"It's the system that needed examination, not because it is
treating sex offenders poorly, but because of the effect on taxpayers
and because of the legal template it creates. It can grow into
something larger."

Everyone fears that someone released from a civil commitment program
could commit a new crime.

Our role in reporting this project is not to suggest that this fear
is unfounded; it's to raise questions about the way the state has
responded to it.

2. Decision Based On Predicting Who Will Commit A
Sex Crime In The Future

More often, these cases come down to contentious duels between
psychologists over how best to analyse an offender's history and
likelihood of repeating crimes. In most states, commitment is for an
indefinite period, but offenders are allowed to have their cases
reviewed by a court periodically.

"The population that is being detained is a very, very
mixed group," said Richard Wollert, a psychologist in Portland,
Oregon, who evaluates civilly committed offenders. "There are
cases that are appalling in terms of being kept in custody at the
taxpayers' expense when there are probably alternative placements for
them."

Predicting who is likely to commit future sex crimes has become more
of a science over the last decade, but many still find the methods
questionable. Actuarial formulas, akin to the tables used for life
insurance, play a central role in deciding who is dangerous enough to be
committed. They calculate someone's risk of offending again by looking
at factors such as the number of prior sex offenses and the sex of the
victims. Men with male victims are graded as higher risk for example,
because statistics show they are more often repeat offenders.

In an unpublished study conducted for the US National Institute of
Justice, psychologists Raymond Knight of Brandeis University in Waltham,
Massachusetts, and David Thornton of the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment
Center in Mauston, Wisconsin, have tested the leading actuarial risk
assessments using information on a sample of sex offenders treated at a
secure centre in Massachusetts between 1959 and 1984.

Looking at sex offences committed in the first three years after
release, the areas under the curves varied between 0.67 and 0.70 -
apparently not a bad result. But if you consider what's called the
predictive area - the total area between a straight line representing a
prediction based on chance, and perfect prediction based on a single
point in the top left corner - then things look less good.

"We're explaining less than 40 per cent of the predictive
area," says Knight. "When I explain that, most people are
horrified."

said Eric Janus, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in
St. Paul who has challenged Minnesota's civil commitment law in court.
Politics and emotion also factor heavily into who gets committed, with
decisions made by elected judges or juries who may be more affected by
the raw facts of someone's offence history or the public spectacle over
their crimes, than the dry science of risk prediction.

"It's so emotional for them, they don't even want to hear the
research", said Stephen Watson, an assistant public defender who
represented an offender in Florida.

Most states' civil commitment laws have been worded to sidestep such
objections, and require only that those detained are more likely to re-offend
than not. Some set the bar even lower.

"These laws have been developed with more concern for public
protection than civil liberties," says Cynthia Calkins Mercado, a
clinical psychologist at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in
New York.

So do these laws protect the public?

Statistics on sex crimes suggest they do not to any great extent.

The US Bureau of Justice Statistics has studied offending patterns
for a cohort of more than 270,000 prisoners released in 1994 across 15
states. Given that most states had not then enacted civil commitment
laws, the sex offenders in that group are likely to include individuals
who today would be detained as dangerous sexual predators.

Sex offenders accounted for about 4 per cent of those released, and
over three years of follow-up, these individuals were on average about
four times as likely to be arrested for a subsequent sex offence as
those previously jailed for other crimes. Yet because there were fewer
of them, the sex offenders still accounted for only a minority of the
sex crimes committed by the group as a whole: of the ex-convicts
subsequently arrested for sexual offences, 87 per cent had previously
been imprisoned for some other type of crime.

What's more, analyses by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of felonies
in large urban counties across the US, shows that most sex crimes are
committed by people who have never been convicted of any crime. The
latest available figures, from 2002, reveal that 79 per cent of those
charged with rape had no prior felony convictions. Evidence from various
jurisdictions similarly suggests that most convicted child abusers had
also not previously been in trouble with the law.

To critics of current policies, the mismatch between public
perceptions and crime statistics is at the root of the problem. People
are appalled by sex offending, but do not like to acknowledge that it is
widespread throughout society. So the public and media demonise
convicted offenders, and politicians devise laws such as civil
commitment in response.

"It's a way of articulating society's condemnation of sexual
violence without doing anything fundamental about it," says Janus.

In 2007, the decision by New York to confine sex offenders beyond
their prison terms placed the state at the forefront of a growing
national movement that was popular with politicians and voters. A
Democrat governor, Eliot Spitzer, suggested that the proposed civil
commitment law would "become a national model" and go well
beyond confining the most violent predators, to also include mental
health treatment and intensive supervised release for offenders.
"No one has a bill like this, nobody," said Republican Dale M.
Volker from western New York, and a leading proponent in the Legislature
of civil commitment.

But such programs have almost never met the stated purpose of
treating the worst criminals until they no longer pose a threat.

"When the most dangerous sexual predators are due to leave
prison ... officials can revoke their freedom and toss them into
mental hospitals indefinitely." Essentially, the process
"permits the state to transform a criminal sentence with a
specified duration into an indeterminate life sentence."

Indeed, only a small fraction of committed offenders have ever
completed treatment to the point where they could be released free and
clear. Few ever make such progress. Nationwide, of the 250 offenders
released unconditionally since the first law was passed in 1990, about
half of them were let go on legal or technical grounds unrelated to
treatment by 2007.

On a per capita basis, Minnesota has more offenders subject to a
civil commitments program than any other state, and is second in raw
numbers only to California, which has six times the population. Unlike
other states with similar systems, no one in Minnesota has been released
from treatment.

That raises some important questions about whether this is really a treatment
program or a shadow prison system.

If civil commitment is supposed to prevent sex offenders from
offending again, it has to be accountable and exhibit some demonstrable
success otherwise the courts could rule at some point that it's merely a
prison in disguise. If society wants to throw away the key, lawmakers
and judges have that power.

However, in Minnesota, prisoners are being committed based on a
consensus of psychologists, and treated with the stated goal of allowing
them to re-enter society. To date, the treatment has never ended for
anyone except when they die. Meanwhile, the cost to Minnesota taxpayers
is staggering, at three times that for treatment given in prisons, and
puts the taxpayer on the hook forever.

The reporter of this story faced difficulty getting information on
the residents within the facility, because the state insisted that
patients’ records were private. Instead he went directly to the
patients and asked them to release their records. After nearly two years
of trying, he was allowed to tour one of these facilities.

In the US as a whole, relatively few committed sex offenders finish
treatment and are released.

"Every year I go to his hearing, and every year there's no
progress in his case," said a lawyer with a client in
Pennsylvania who was committed in 2004 after being adjudicated as a
juvenile for sexual assault on two different minors. "It doesn't
seem that anyone gets better."

Nearly 3000 sex offenders have been committed across the US since the
first law was passed in 1990. In all but one state,

about 50 of them have been released completely from commitment
because clinicians or state-appointed evaluators deemed them ready,
and

some 115 others have been sent home because of legal
technicalities, court rulings, terminal illness or old age.

Arizona, the remaining state, has been the exception in that it has
fully discharged 81 people. There, the facility's director said records
were not available to indicate the reason for those discharges. An
additional 189 people have been released with supervision or conditions

(excluding Texas, where there is no civil commitment centre and
those committed are treated only as outpatients).

And an additional 68 (including 58 in Arizona) are in a higher,
"transitional" phase of the program, but still technically
committed and often living on state land.

The backlogs have led to an aging population. Inside many facilities,
wheelchairs, walkers, high blood pressure and senility are increasingly
expensive concerns. Florida's centre filled 229 prescriptions for
arthritis medication one recent month, and 300 for blood pressure and
other heart problems. More than 400 of the men in civil commitment are
60 or older, and a number of studies indicate a significant drop in the
recidivism rate for this group, many of whom have health problems after
years in prison. David Thornton, treatment director of Wisconsin's
centre and an expert on recidivism rates, said the decline was
increasingly well-documented.

Mr Hendricks, a 72-year-old convicted child molester in Kansas
finished his prison term 13 years ago, but he remains locked up at a
cost to taxpayers of $ 185,000 a year, more than eight times the cost of
keeping someone in prison there. The man unsuccessfully challenged his
confinement in the Supreme Court, and spends most days in a wheelchair
or leaning on a cane, because of diabetes, circulation ailments and the
effects of a stroke. He may not live long enough to "graduate"
from treatment. The costs of aging and sick offenders, such as Mr.
Hendricks, are especially high, in part because of their special needs
and physical ailments.

The growth of the committed population has become a political
quagmire. No legislator wants to insist on the release of sex offenders,
but few are able to swallow the mounting costs of civil commitment.

A convicted sex offender whose thoughts and fantasies about
children, rather than actions against them, prompted authorities
to revoke his parole two years ago, now faces indefinite secure
commitment for treatment after a jury verdict branded him a sexual
predator. A petition to have him committed as a sexually violent person
was filed last year as Michael Monyelle was nearing release from prison.
During his trial, two state psychologists testified that Monyelle was at
risk to re-offend, while one psychologist, retained by the defence,
concluded he was unlikely to do so.

The case likely will spark debate in the legal community over whether
it presages a new dimension to the Wisonsin sexual predator law, or
merely highlights one of many factors already considered in determining
the likelihood of sex offenders striking again.

Monyelle, was placed on 10 years of probation in 1997 on two counts
of second-degree sexual assault of a child for relationships he had with
two girls, one 16 and the other 14. Both girls considered Monyelle
their boyfriend, but they both were legally under the age of
consent.

Monyelle's former probation agent testified during the trial that
Monyelle shared his fantasies about children when he underwent standard
questioning about his thought patterns. The thoughts
included sexual imaginings about children he saw on television and thoughts
about abducting and sexually assaulting children he encountered in
public.

Monyelle's lawyer, Steven Prifogle, said there never would have been
a case to bring to the jury if his client hadn't volunteered his
thoughts about children to his parole officer.

"I think this could eventually have a very chilling effect for
the people who are on probation or parole," Prifogle said.
"You want them to be forthcoming about things."

But Kevin St. John, a spokesman for the state Department of Justice,
said the jury agreed with prosecutors that Monyelle is "a sexually
violent person," referring to a predator law term.

"He is not being punished for his thoughts," St. John
said. "He is being ordered for treatment."

Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Gabrysiak, who prosecuted the
case, told the jury that Monyelle

"has a problem, and his problem needs to be addressed."

The case, he said, was about prevention. Gabrysiak also said the
thoughts that landed Monyelle in hot water were shared only after he was
confronted about violating an aspect of his parole.

"He only volunteered his thoughts when he was asked,"
Gabrysiak told the jury. "Either he volunteered this information
because he was confronted, or it was a cry for help."

Monyelle, 30, now faces a commitment that will likely be lengthy and
possibly could last the rest of his life.

While more than 300 people have been civilly committed under the
Wisconsin predator law since it was enacted in 1994, just 18 are in the
community; one more is set for release this fall.

The first political protest against sex offender civil commitment
took place in March 2008 in Coalinga, California, outside the grounds of
a 1500-bed civil commitment centre, the biggest in the US. Hundreds of
men there have already served their criminal time, yet in violation of a
raft of constitutional rights, they are imprisoned at Coalinga
indefinitely. The protest was attended by dozens of people but got
almost no media coverage.

Emory Michau Jr. was jailed in 1993 for molesting an 8-year-old boy.
After serving his sentence, he solicited sex from a 17-year-old youth
and was jailed once more. By 2003, after a further two years inside, he
was scheduled for release. Yet by 2007, Michau remains incarcerated in
Charleston county jail, South Carolina. Not for his previous crimes, but
because he has refused to undergo psychiatric assessment to determine
whether he poses a danger to the public. If the assessment went against
him, Michau could be locked up indefinitely in a secure mental facility.

The federal government cannot keep sex offenders in custody beyond
the end of their prison sentences, a federal judge has ruled, striking
down a law aimed at holding people deemed "sexually dangerous"
in mental hospitals.

District Court Judge W. Earl Britt of Raleigh, North Carolina, said
the civil commitment is unconstitutional because the federal government
cannot hold a person indefinitely out of fear that the individual
will commit a crime in the future. Britt said the government would have
to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is "sexually
dangerous" to commit them indefinitely. Even then,

"there is serious question as to whether the federal
government could ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an
individual is both suffering from a mental illness or abnormality such
as paedophilia and unlikely to refrain from sexually violent conduct
in the future as a result of that illness."

The ruling is binding only in Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, West Virginia, and Maryland, and the ruling is at odds with
the decisions of federal district courts in Hawaii, Oklahoma, and
Massachusetts, which have upheld the civil commitment law.

In France (2008), a proposed law to further detain offenders
after serving their sentences would violate the right to liberty and
undermine the rule of law, according to Human Rights Watch.

"Locking people up on speculation that they might
commit some future crime undermines hundreds of years of criminal
justice in France," said Jean-Marie Fardeau, Paris director of
Human Rights Watch. "The Senate should reject this measure as
unacceptable."

The French government wants to create so-called
"socio-medico-legal detention centres" for individuals who
were sentenced to fifteen or more years in prison for a violent crime.
Under the proposed bill, a three-judge special commission would have the
authority to impose an additional one-year jail term if an offender is
found to be dangerous and likely to re-offend by a multidisciplinary
panel of experts. The one-year detention periods could be renewed
indefinitely, and could only be challenged in a three-judge appeals
commission based in Paris.

There would be a limited right of appeal to the Court of Cassation,
the court of last resort for points of law. The proposed preventive
detention scheme violates fair trial standards guaranteed in the
European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch said, including

the right to the presumption of innocence,

protection against arbitrary detention, and

the right not to be punished twice for the same crime.

Depriving someone of their freedom is only lawful for a legitimate
and explicitly permitted purpose in law and subject to adequate
procedural guarantees, including the right to challenge the deprivation
of liberty, independent periodic review and compensation for unlawful
deprivation of liberty.

"Whatever the French government says, internment in these
centres amounts to a double punishment for the same crime," said
Fardeau. "And it could mean for some that a 15-year sentence
becomes a life sentence."

France already has measures in place to ensure psychiatric
confinement for those who pose a direct threat to themselves or others.
There are also mechanisms to monitor certain categories of convicted
criminals upon release, such as requirements to register with the police
and the use of electronic bracelets. The effectiveness of these measures
should be assessed fully before restrictions on liberty are
contemplated. To date, neither has been.

A broad spectrum of opinion opposes the proposed law, including
national human rights nongovernmental organizations, the national bar
association, a union of judges, and Robert Badinter, a former justice
minister. In a general comment on life sentences, Council of Europe
Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg has also expressed
concern about the compatibility of measures of this type with the rule
of law.

Political leaders, like those in New York, are vastly expanding civil
commitment programs to keep large numbers of rapists and paedophiles off
the streets after their prison terms. Even with the enthusiasm among
politicians, an examination by The New York Times of the existing
programs, found they have failed in a number of areas:

Sex offenders selected for commitment are not always the most
violent: some exhibitionists are chosen for example, while rapists
are passed over. And some are past the age at which some scientists
consider them most dangerous. In Wisconsin, a 102-year-old resident
who wears a sport coat to dinner cannot participate in treatment
because of memory lapses and poor hearing.

The treatment regimens are expensive and largely unproven, and
there is no way to compel patients to participate. Many simply do
not show up for sessions on their lawyers' advice because treatment
often requires them to recount crimes, even those not known to law
enforcement. Instead they spend their time gardening, watching
television or playing video games.

The cost of the programs is virtually unchecked and growing, with
states spending nearly $ 450 million on them this year. The annual
price of housing a committed sex offender averages more than $
100,000, compared with about $26,000 a year for keeping someone in
prison, due to the higher costs for programs, treatment and
supervised freedoms.

Unlike prisons and other institutions, civil commitment centres
receive little standard, independent oversight or monitoring; sex
among offenders is sometimes rampant, and, in at least one facility,
sex has been reported between offenders and staff members.

Successful treatment is often not a factor in determining the
relatively few offenders who are released. In Iowa, of the nine men
let go unconditionally, none had completed treatment or earned the
centre's recommendation for release.

Few states have figured out what to do when they do have graduates
ready for supervised release. In California, the state made 269
attempts to find a home for one released paedophile. In Milwaukee,
the authorities started searching in 2003 for a neighbourhood for a
77-year-old offender, but have yet to find one.

The law is being challenged in federal court by Mental Hygiene Legal
Services. That’s the state agency that represents sex offenders the
state is trying to confine.

Steve Harkavy, the agency’s chief lawyer in New York City, concedes
that since the Supreme Court decision

(authorities must prove not just that an offender is still
dangerous and likely to commit more crimes, but also that he or she
has a "serious difficulty in controlling behaviour."),

there’s no longer a question that states can confine sex offenders.

The question is how to do it, and Harkavy says that New York’s
law is an example of how not to pass a law that protects the public
while also balancing the constitutional rights of sex offenders.

The challenge may have to be decided in a full-blown federal trial,
but Harkavy has won part of his argument. If someone has a mental
abnormality, what kind of treatment will they get if they are locked
away in a hospital?

"What you’ve found in other states is that there’s been a
lot of litigation over the fact that people are not getting the
treatment they’re supposedly hospitalized to get," Harkavy
said. "One school of thought is that these places end up being
sort of roach motels – people go in, they never go out."

For those who decline treatment, sometimes including hundreds of
"detainees" awaiting commitment trials, boredom, resentment
and hostility to those in treatment, lead to trouble. Some sneak in
drugs, alcohol and cell-phones, sometimes with the help of staff
members, or beat up other residents, sometimes coercing them into having
sex.

"There's rampant sexuality going on in there," said
Natalie Novick Brown, a psychologist who has evaluated 250 men at
Florida's centre.

The people who run civil commitment centres say that a
constant, nagging question hangs over them: How to keep order while not
treating argumentative, sometimes violent offenders like prisoners?
Low-level centre staff members are not prison guards, and tend to be
poorly educated, trained and paid. Their job titles, for example in
Illinois: "Security Therapy Aide", reflect the awkward balance
they must achieve between security and therapy.

Because civil commitment centres are neither prisons nor traditional
mental health programs, no specialized oversight body exists. None has
been created, in part because its base of financial support, the 19
civil commitment programs around the country, would be too small,
several experts who study the programs said. But the need, they said, is
urgent.

"They ought to be reviewed by an independent entity with
the highest possible standards," said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of
the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic in Baltimore.

Those who choose to participate in sex offender treatment, spend an
average of less than 10 hours a week doing so, but the hours differ
vastly from state to state. The structure of therapy varies widely too,
a reflection perhaps of the central question still looming in the field:
Can treatment ever really work for these offenders?

Admitting to
previous crimes is a crucial piece of a broad band of treatment known as
relapse prevention that is used in at least 15 states and has been the
most widely accepted model for about 20 years. Some of the institutions,
too, devote time to other therapies and activities that seem to have
little bearing on sexual offending.

In Pennsylvania, young residents
take classes to improve their health and social habits called

"Athlete's Foot",

"Lactose Intolerance",

"Male
Pattern Baldness",

"Flatulence" and

"Proper Table
Manners".

In California, they can join a Brazilian drum ensemble or
classes like

"Anger Management Through Art Therapy" and

"Interpersonal Skills Through Mural Making."
But many of those
committed get no treatment at all for sex offending, mainly by their own
choice.

In California, three-quarters of civilly committed sex offenders
do not attend therapy. Many say their lawyers tell them to avoid it
because admission of past misdeeds during therapy could make getting out
impossible, or worse, lead to new criminal charges.

Even the look of commitment centres reflects the dichotomy at the
core of their stated reason for being,

not just to lock away dangerous
men (only three women are civilly committed)

but also to treat them.

Most of the centres tend to look and feel like prisons, with clanking
double doors, guard stations, fluorescent lighting, cinder-block walls,
overcrowded conditions, and tall fences with razor wire around the
perimeters. Bedroom doors are often locked at night, and mail is
searched by the staff for pornography or retail catalogues with pictures
of women or children.

Most states put their centres in isolated areas.
Washington State's is on an island three miles offshore in Puget Sound.
Yet soothing artwork hangs at some centres, and cheerful fliers announce
movie nights and other activities. The residents can wander the grounds
and often spend their time as they please in an effort to encourage
their cooperation, including sunbathing in courtyards and sometimes even
ordering pizza for delivery. The new centre in California will have a
20,000-book library, badminton courts and room for music and art
therapy.

Diseases like hepatitis and diabetes are common among the committed,
and severe mental illness, beyond the mental "abnormalities"
described by the Supreme Court, a scourge.

A survey in 2002 found that
12 percent of committed sex offenders suffered from serious psychiatric
problems like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Most severely mentally
ill men cannot participate in sex offender treatment, and thus receive
few services other than medication.

Verwayne Alexander, a self-described
paranoid schizophrenic who has been detained at the Florida Civil
Commitment Centre since 2003, has sliced himself so many times with
razor blades that a guard often watches him around the clock, lawyers
said. Mr. Alexander has sought unsuccessfully to be moved to a
psychiatric hospital.

Mike Meyer says that in his 13 years locked inside Minnesota Sex
Offender Program facilities, he's gained insight into why he molested 36
children and young adults, and how to stop himself from doing it again.

One technique psychologists taught him is privately repeating a deviant
thought over and over until it loses its allure.

Another is telling on
himself; confessing to a counsellor or support group when he feels a
taboo attraction.

Both are supposed to break the cycle of thoughts and
behaviours that led to his crimes.

"When I was offending I felt
like I was a freak, like I couldn't talk to anybody," said Meyer,
38.

Now he recognizes secrecy as "a big red flag." Meyer
completed all the required phases of treatment in the Minnesota Sex
Offender Program four years ago and has an 18-page Pre-discharge Plan
listing his strategies for not re-offending. But he remains locked up.

Of similar programs in 19 states, only the 14-year-old Minnesota Sex
Offender Program and three others that are much newer have released no
patients.

While most states leave release decisions to the courts,
Minnesota was one of only two states that (at least until 2008), put
that authority in the hands of a political appointee, the human services
commissioner, and a paid review board he or she appoints. Their
decisions could go to a court only on appeal.

In 2008, the Legislature
removed the commissioner from reduction-of-custody decisions, but left
that authority with the appointed review board. Because no one can
guarantee an offender won't rape or molest again, the safest course for
political appointees has been to keep offenders locked up regardless of
how their treatment has progressed.

The result has been a ballooning
Minnesota Sex Offender Program population, with each resident costing
tax payers about $ 130,000 a year, three times what it costs to treat
them in a conventional prison.

In the Minnesota Sex Offender Program's
history, a commissioner has approved only one provisional release, which
was revoked in 2003 for rule violations. That same year Governor Tim
Pawlenty prohibited releases from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program
unless required by law or ordered by a court. Pawlenty's order remains
in effect. The situation prompted several of the experts who designed
and ran the Minnesota Sex Offender Program to become disillusioned and
leave. Many patients also have given up. As of 2008, about 20 percent
didn't participate in treatment while dozens who have completed the
requirements for release wait in limbo, struggling to hold onto the hope
that it wasn't all pointless.

"This place is morbidly hopeless and
morbidly depressing," Meyer said recently. "I really have to
believe there's going to be something better than this, because if I
don't, I'm going to die here."

Minnesota Sex Offender Program's clinicians also challenge patients
to revise core beliefs that have led to offending, such as the idea that
some women want to be raped or that laws against paedophilia are wrong.
Such changeable attitudes or behaviours are labelled "dynamic risk
factors," which patients must discard in order to advance in
treatment. Patients aroused by rape or abuse fantasies are taught to
avert them by taking whiffs from vials of ammonia or rotten meat.

The
Minnesota Sex Offender Program also treats other problems that can
interfere with patients' treatment and may have contributed to their
crimes, such as chemical addictions, clinical depression and mental
illnesses or retardation. The program penalizes consensual sex between
two gay patients who, for example, are in what they consider to be a
healthy relationship. Patients therefore have to be celibate. Those
caught having consensual sex can be placed in "protective
isolation," restricted to their rooms, or otherwise disciplined.

A report by the US Congressional Research Service in 2008 said that
of 2,694 civilly committed sex offenders nationwide in the fall of 2006,
only 252 had been discharged, most within the past few years. Experts
say it's impossible to tell whether treatment works based on such a
small number of mostly recent releases.

As to non-committed sex
offenders, a 2002 study found that 12.3 percent of a group of treated
offenders committed a new sex crime, compared with 16.8 percent of
untreated offenders. The congressional report concluded that
"research indicates that there is not enough evidence to
definitively prove that treatment for sex offenders works."

Dr. Michael Farnsworth was the forensic psychiatrist at the St. Peter
Security Hospital in the early 1990s, when Minnesota became the second
state after Washington, to start committing sex offenders to mental
hospitals after their prison sentences. Farnsworth said the hospital
opposed the move.

"We said I would be a money pit, that there would
be no end to it, and that there’s no proven technology to treat these
people."
He added that in the years since he helped set up the
Minnesota Sex Offender Program,
"there's not been a huge explosion
in the knowledge or the evaluation of the efficacy of treatment, so most
of the offenders across the country who have been committed remain
committed. Therefore it's very difficult to determine whether this very
expensive treatment option, versus simple containment in prison on
extended sentences, is really any more effective than doing
nothing."

The director of Wisconsin's civilly committed offender
program, which is being eyed as a possible model for Minnesota, says
treatment does appear to reduce a patient's risk of re-offending. Since
Wisconsin's program began in 1994, it has fully discharged 14 offenders
after what was deemed successful treatment, said Steve Watters, director
of the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Centre in Mauston. Wisconsin courts
released another 19 patients after legal challenges or because of
reassessment of their risk. Two committed new sex offenses after their
release.

Wisconsin's program has a mix of treatment techniques similar
to Minnesota's, with the greatest emphasis on changing disordered
thinking and core beliefs.

"Relapse prevention was at one point
very mechanistic: 'If x happens, then do y,''' Watters said. "But
you can't [envision] every possible dynamic they'll encounter. It's
better to make them understand their errors in thinking, and change
their behaviour."

Unlike the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, which
has no patients in non-secure settings, Sand Ridge is overseeing 16
offenders who completed treatment and have returned to their home
communities, to demonstrate their worthiness for discharge. Agents stop
by at random and track their movements with GPS bracelets. If they obey
a stringent set of rules for several years, Watters said, the courts
typically remove them from supervised status and grant a full discharge.

Watters cites:

Wisconsin's reliance on the courts for release decisions
as one reason for that state's success. In Minnesota, release authority
rests with a review board appointed by the Human Services commissioner.

"Obviously there are no guarantees," Watters said. "If
you wait until they're 'cured,' you'll never release any sex offender.
But I think the evidence would support that well-designed and
implemented treatment does produce a significant reduction in
risk."

Slow on purpose Meyer maintains that his treatment has
worked. Last year he petitioned the Minnesota Sex Offender Program's
Special Review Board for a transfer to the program's Community
Preparation Services unit, an unlocked facility with less supervision,
which would put him a step closer to discharge. Minnesota Sex Offender
Program clinicians opposed his petition, saying he needs to pass
polygraph and other examinations to prove his deviant thoughts are at
bay.

A test called the Abel Assessment, which measures how patients
respond to various photographs, found in 2005 that he was no longer
attracted to deviant themes. Clinicians said they also want Meyer to
prove he can move about the treatment centre campus unaccompanied,
without creating any problems, before they'll support his transfer.

Meyer appealed to a Minnesota Supreme Court
three-judge panel, which has yet to issue a decision.

Assistant Human
Services Commissioner Wes Kooistra, designated by Ludeman to speak for
the department, said the process leading to discharge is deliberately
slow.

"The only way they're going to be even considered for
discharge is if they show a pattern over time of changing," he
said.

Psychologist Paul Reitman, who has treated and assessed sex
offenders for 18 years, examined Meyer for the three-judge panel.

"I urge the court to grant Mr. Meyer's request," he wrote.
"In my opinion, [he] has made real transformations to become a
law-abiding citizen and to control himself sexually." Minnesota,
Reitman wrote, has "committed vast financial resources to
rehabilitate sex offenders. Either we are committed to rehabilitation,
or we are going to keep sex offenders locked up indeterminately."

One needn't delve very far into the horrors contained by the
Minnesota Sex Offender Program [*] to reach three disturbing conclusions:

Some of those people should never be allowed to walk freely in society
again, some of them probably should be, and Minnesota has abdicated the
responsibility of telling the difference.

Authorities have resorted to
commitment much more often than in earlier years. That fact alone
suggests forces at work beyond a dispassionate application of law and
science. The population of the centres has grown from 200 in 2003 to
more than 500 in 2008.

And though the residents are receiving treatment,
the effectiveness of that treatment is open to question in light of the
number of patients who have been released: none.

But public policy ought not to be driven by the overwhelming public
loathing that such predators evoke. If the state's true intention is to
lock such people away for life, let it say so, using the language of
laws and due process. Let it search in broad daylight for the means to
put away those who must never be free and to help those who may be
salvageable, and to become expert in telling them apart.

According to a report from the New York Department of Correctional
Services, between 1985 and 2001 a total of 11,898 sex offenders were
released from New York State prisons. Only 253 of these (2.1%) were
returned to prison for new sex crimes within three years of their
release.

These figures will be shocking to many in the public, and even
to many lawmakers who have bought into the mythology of the high rate of
sex offender recidivism. Make no mistake, "bought in" is the
appropriate description.

Civil commitment of sex offenders in New York
State is estimated to cost $ 81 million in its first year. In the debate
in the New York State Assembly, Peter Rivera referred to estimated costs
in out years of $ 650 million per year. Other states have found that
initial estimates have been lower than actual costs. Their experience
has been that almost no offender is ever released.

The populations and
the cost keep skyrocketing. The initial estimate is that New York will
confine 100 offenders in the first year. At that rate, New York will
civilly commit 1600 individuals over the next 16 years whom it deems
unable to control their actions. Compare that figure to the 253 who were
unable to control their actions over the aforementioned 16 year period.
The high cost of sex offender mythology only begins there.

Economists
Leigh Linden and Jonah Rockoff found in a North Carolina study that when
a sex offender moves into a neighbourhood, the value of houses within a
one-tenth mile area around the sex offender's home fall by 4 percent on
average. They estimated that the presence of sex offenders has shrunk
property values in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina by about $ 58
million.

One should keep those figures in mind, when one reads news of
the recent court decision which will result in 4400 sex offenders being
restored to the New York sex offender registry. None of these had
previously been listed in the online registry. Due to a recent change in
the law, the Level 2 (moderate risk) offenders now will be listed. These
individuals had all been told that if they lived safely in the community
for 10 years they would be dropped from the registry. They complied. New
York State changed the law. Their neighbours will pay the cost in the
loss of their property values. No one will be any safer.

Some
communities have already figured out the affect of sex offenders on
housing values. They have enacted sex offender residency laws which shut
out former offenders.

Of course, many offenders become homeless.
Taxpayers have to pick up the tab. Suffolk County in New York state, now
houses homeless offenders in trailers which they move around the county
and place in undisclosed locations at the cost of $ 85 per night per
offender. The experience in other states is that such residency laws
result in more offenders failing to register because they cannot find
housing. Of course, this results in more politicians calling for GPS
tracking of offenders, which in turn costs more taxpayer dollars.

There are more potential costs on the horizon. Senators Schumer and
McCain have submitted a bill which would require that registered sex
offenders register their e-mail addresses and online screen names.
Former offenders who do not do so, may be sentenced to prison for up to
ten years.

This will not be effective in preventing crime. Anyone who
knows anything about the Internet knows that e-mail addresses are easily
created with fake information. It most likely will result in some
otherwise law abiding former offender being imprisoned for forgetting to
submit some long unused screen name or e-mail address. Taxpayers will
pay the cost. No one will be safer.

Of course, Senators Schumer and
McCain are responding to the fear of Internet predators elicited by such
reports as those on the "To Catch a Predator" series.
[*]

The
senators need to pay more attention to the statistics given on the show:
out of the 200 plus perpetrators caught in the sting, only four were
registered sex offenders, a clear demonstration that sex offender
mythology is just that: mythology.

The statistics reflect those reported
by the U.S. Department of Justice. The vast majority of new sex crimes
are committed by someone other than registered sex offenders. The
Department of Justice reports that 93% of sex crimes against children
occur within the family or are committed by adults whom the children
know well. The face of danger is more likely to be in a family snapshot
than on a sex offender registry. We often decry politicians for just
throwing money at problems. As regards the problem of sex offences, they
are throwing our money, but they are largely missing the problem.

In recent decades, growth in the number of people in US prisons has
been the largest in history - the prison population increased by more
than one million between 1980 and 2000. To accommodate this growth,
corrections officials have pursued a variety of strategies, including
greatly expanding the network of prisons.

The number of state prison
facilities increased from about 600 prisons in the mid-1970s to over
1,000 prisons by the year 2000. Because the Census Bureau counts
prisoners where they are incarcerated in the decennial census, the
locations of prisons may have significant implications for state and
federal funding allocations, as well as political representation.

Despite this tremendous growth, the prison construction boom has
received relatively little attention. It is remarkable that a public
undertaking as far-reaching as the American prison expansion, which
affects millions of incarcerated individuals, influences millions more
family and community members, and consumes billions of public dollars,
would receive so little empirical analysis and public scrutiny. Our
study focuses on 10 states that experienced the largest growth in the
number of prisons during the 1980s and 1990s.

Several themes emerge from our analyses

First is the pervasiveness
of prison growth. The prison construction boom of the last two decades
was not concentrated in a few states or in certain regions of the
country, but occurred in states across the country. Prison systems also
expanded within states, as new prisons were more geographically
dispersed. The share of counties in the 10 study states that were home
to at least one prison increased from 13 percent of counties in 1979 to
31 percent of counties in 2000. In addition, the number of prisons
increased significantly in both metro and non-metro counties,
challenging the notion that prison expansion has primarily taken place
in non-metro counties.

A second theme to emerge is that in a select number of smaller
communities, prison expansion has significantly impacted the total
population. In each of the 10 study states there were several counties
where a notable share of the total population was incarcerated. Thirteen
counties in the 10 study states had 20 percent or more of the resident
population imprisoned in 2000. All 10 states had least five counties
where 5 percent or more of the population was imprisoned. Not
surprisingly, most of these counties, but not all, were non-metro
counties. Analyses show that the share of prisoners who resides in
non-metro counties is greater than the share of the general population
who resides in non-metro counties, and that this has been the case for
at least the last two decades.

A third theme is the mismatch between the places prisoners consider
home and the places prisoners serve their time. Our analyses show large
disparities between the sentencing counties and the counties of
imprisonment.

America’s incarceration rate is exploding

In 1970, there were
fewer than 200,000 people in prison. By 2005, there were approximately
1.5 million state and federal prisoners (or 491 per 100,000 population).
Each year, over 650,000 people are admitted to state and federal
prisons, and a much larger number (over 10 million) go to local jails.
If we add to the prison population the nearly 750,000 people
incarcerated in local jails, as at the beginning of 2007, the total
number imprisoned in the US on any given day is 2.2 million.

The US is
the world leader in imprisonment. China, with a much larger population,
has the second largest incarcerated population, with 1.5 million
imprisoned. With 737 people incarcerated per 100,000 persons, the US
also leads the world in rates of incarceration - well above Russia,
which has the next highest rate of 581 per 100,000.

The other Western democratic countries manage with prison populations
far smaller than the US. Not only are lengths of imprisonment
significantly longer than they were in earlier periods in US penal
history, but they are considerably longer than in most other Western
nations. For the same crimes, American prisoners receive sentences

twice
as long as English prisoners,

three times as long as Canadian prisoners,

four times as long as Dutch prisoners,

five to ten times as long as
French prisoners, and

five times as long as Swedish prisoners.

Yet these
countries’ rates of violent crime are lower than those of the US, and
their rates of property crime are comparable.

The major reason for the increase in prison populations at least
since 1990 has been longer lengths of imprisonment. The adoption of
truth in sentencing provisions that require prisoners to serve most of
their sentences in prison, a wide variety of mandatory minimum
sentencing provisions that prevent judges from placing defendants on
probation even when their involvement in the conduct that led to the
conviction was minor, reductions in the amount of good time a prisoner
can receive while imprisoned, and more conservative parole boards have
significantly impacted the length of stay.

For example, in a special
study by the U.S. Department of Justice on truth in sentencing, between
1990 and 1997,

the numbers of prison admissions increased by only 17%
(from 460,739 to 540,748), while

the prison population increased by 60%
(from 689,577 to 1,100,850).

This larger increase in the prison
population can only be caused by a longer length of stay.
Supervision, 1993 versus 2002

This is further confirmed by US
Department of Justice data for individuals released in 1993 and those
released in 2002 (ten years apart). The 2002 data underestimate the
average length of current prison sentences because they do not include
time served by prisoners sentenced under recent punitive laws (such as
"three strikes and you’re out") who have not yet been
released. Nevertheless, the average time served by those who were
released still increased substantially from 21 months in 1993 to 30
months in 2002. Similarly, the parole supervision period increased from
19 to 24 months, and the total average period of supervision increased
from 40 to 56 months, between 1993 and 2002.

Most prisoners are incarcerated for crimes that do not compare with
the costs of their imprisonment. The US spends over $ 160 billion each
year to fund the criminal justice system. In contrast, the total
economic loss to victims of crime in 2002 was an estimated $ 15.6
billion, or about one-tenth of the total cost of the nation’s criminal
justice system.

The typical (median) costs per crime for each victim was $ 100, which includes losses from property theft or damage, cash losses,
medical expenses, and lost pay. While the financial losses and physical
and emotional injuries sustained by victims can be significant, they
represent only a fraction of what it costs to incarcerate the offenders.

Type of
Crime

Average victim
loss ($)

Prison sentence
(months)

Pre-trial
time (months)

Prison time
served (months)

Total time (months)

In-
carceration
costs
($)

Robbery

1,258

94

5

55

60

113,000

Burglary

1,545

52

5

29

34

64,000

Larceny/
Theft

730

34

5

20

25

47,000

Auto/
Theft

6,646

27

5

17

22

41,000

The above figure illustrates the vast disparity between the economic
losses associated with four common crimes and the amount expended to
incarcerate the offender. For example, the average loss associated with
a robbery reported to the police is $ 1,258.

The typical prison sentence for robbery in the United States is 94
months, or about eight years, of which the typical time served is 55
months. Together with the time spent in jail pre-trial, the average
robbery offender is incarcerated for 60 months at a cost of
approximately $ 113,000.

This historic rise in incarceration has often been attributed to the
"fact" that in the early 1970s, the US faced a steadily
increasing crime problem, leaving no choice but to increase the use of
incarceration massively. But this explanation for the imprisonment binge
is misleading and incomplete. Crime rates have grown in other countries
and within other states within the US without provoking a large growth
in prison populations. There are various ways a country can respond to
increased crime; ‘more prisons’ is just one of them. Moreover,
statistics show that it was not primarily a rise in crime that fuelled
the increase in incarceration rates.

We have argued that using imprisonment to reduce crime by deterring,
incapacitating, or rehabilitating is of limited value, and is now
yielding diminishing returns.

What then should imprisonment be used for?

Imprisonment can legitimately satisfy a social and personal need for
retribution toward those who violate society’s laws. Most contemporary
philosophies of punishment give a large role to retribution. In addition
to satisfying victims’ needs, punishing lawbreakers according to what
they deserve can perform important social functions. Punishment can
promote social solidarity, while failure to respond to crime weakens
commitment to social norms.

At the same time, excessive punishment can
exacerbate social tensions and widens divisions, reducing solidarity. It
can corrode a nation’s political culture, and obstruct efforts to deal
constructively with social problems, including crime.

Retribution should
not be used as an excuse for mindless punitive sanctions as is the case
now. The essence of the retribution is to punish people proportionately
to what they deserve, based on the crime they have committed. Excessive
leniency and undeserved harshness both violate the principle of
proportionality.

Failure to limit the severity of punishment to what is
deserved is unjust. It alienates citizens from the government and
undercuts the effectiveness of law enforcement. When those who are
punished are disproportionately poor and members of minority groups, it
is inevitable that they will believe that the law is being used to
repress them, rather than holding them accountable for their crimes.

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that substantial numbers of
people think that the courts are too lenient. These sentiments cannot be
taken at face value, and should not be allowed to dictate sentencing
policy unthinkingly.

For example, the vast majority of crimes are
neither as serious as the public believes them to be nor as heinous as
the media portrays them. In addition, many people do not fully
appreciate how harsh and disruptive any form of imprisonment is because
they have never experienced the total loss of agency and privacy that
imprisonment entails. Most prisoners experience monotonous routines,
medical neglect, physical danger, extreme isolation, and a myriad of
deprivations - all of which worsen the trauma of imprisonment.

When
people are presented a fuller picture of the facts of particular crime
and the criminals’ characteristics, they generally favour more
moderate sanctions.

The prestigious American Law Institute’s recently
issued Model Penal Code endorses a concept of "limited
retribution", which allows for the introduction of rehabilitative,
deterrence and incapacitation factors which can influence sentences
within minimum and maximum limits based on retributive considerations.
This position has the merit of limiting the extent to which sentence
lengths can be extended far beyond what a defendant deserves.
Prosecutors and judges currently take such considerations into account
as they negotiate pleas and set sentences.

Nevertheless we are concerned
about the potential for injustice and discrimination associated with
this practice. When decisions made as to whether someone should be
imprisoned or for how long on the basis of what crimes one might commit
if released, or on the basis of a person’s needs for rehabilitation,
they will often be incorrect. Subjecting people who will not commit
serious new crimes to longer sentences simply on the basis of
predictions that are false, is simply unfair.

We are also concerned
determinations of dangerousness or in need of treatment are likely to be
skewed by biases. Stereotypes sometimes operate unconsciously and can
influence perceptions of dangerousness even on the part of
decision-makers who harbour no conscious prejudices. Minority offenders’
personal circumstances may make them appear to some judges as unlikely
prospects for rehabilitation.

Reducing the number and length of prison terms will require changes
in sentencing laws and parole and probation practices. This will not
occur until the public passes referenda and successfully pressures
legislators and executives, or enlightened political leaders better
understand the realities and move on their own to make necessary
changes.

There are a variety of methods and strategies to achieve this
goal. No particular political structure can guarantee or prevent the
progress that is now needed. Sentencing commissions, for example, have
been excellent devices for controlling over-incarceration in some
states, while in other jurisdictions, such as the federal, sentencing
systems have been specifically designed to incapacitate as many accused
as possible, rather than focusing on what offenders deserve.

We also
recognize that as the system of imprisonment has grown, so too has the
investment and the vested interests that support its operations and
growth. In order to reverse the current trends we will have to find a
way to re-allocate the money, political influence, and jobs that the
current system provides. This will not be easy and it will take many
years to wean us off the excessive use of imprisonment.

Our goal has
been to document the negative and ineffective consequences of mass
incarceration in human, economic, and public safety terms. We hope this
report will stimulate a serious debate on the use of imprisonment and
perhaps lead to a new policy of dis-incarceration. If this would occur,
we could re-invest some portion of the tens of billions of dollars we
spend each year incarcerating millions of Americans into those
communities and families that are now being unfairly devastated by
imprisonment.

Ultimately this is a matter of political will, not
political structure. Reform will come when people of good will demand
it.

The above link created and, up to 2009, maintained as an online
resource, has the following introduction:

"This compilation is a
legislative and public servant reminder that something needs to be done;
this is not a memorial. The consequences that sometimes occur need to be
addressed as strongly as prevention, prosecution and punishment of sex
offenses. When lives hang in the balance, ignoring the issues and
consequences - even subtly - is not an answer. Ignorance of laws and
issues is not permitted for an offender, nor should it be for
legislatures or public servants. We are quite sure this is not a
complete list, but just those we have been advised of."

In
addition, often incidents are reported at the time they happen, but the
complete absence of any follow-up reporting, means the circumstances
surrounding the case - nature of death, perpetrator, judgement - fail to
be communicated to the public.

self: The log summarises death
events that relate in some way or another to an individual tagged with
the label: sex offender, even in cases where that person is not actually
a sex offender. 620 individual deaths are summarised in the log
comprising: 569 sex offenders (or believed to be sex offenders) and 51
third parties. Each entry details the nature of the (often violent)
death and provides a link to the original news item. Of the 561 entries,
503 refer to incidents that took place within the US; the remaining 51
incidents took place in other countries, chiefly those western countries
that have established, expanded and zealously enforced sex offender
laws.

Deaths

Total

Caused by

vigilante

publ. serv.

family

other

suicide in society

249

suicide in prison/ccc

91

murder in society

176

68

31

74

3

murder in prison

53

48

5

third party victims

51

The abbreviation ‘ccc’ refers to civil commitment centre.

The
term ‘vigilante’ is meant to mean: an individual who acts violently
and summarily, without recourse to lawful procedures.

The term ‘publ. serv.’
refers to a public servant such as a policeman, a prison guard,
community agency, etc.

The term ‘family’ refers to a family member,
a neighbour or an acquaintance.

Suicide In Society; examples:

(1)

Clovis Ivan Claxton, 38, who was convicted of sexually assaulting
a child in Washington in 1991, had lived in Ocala, Florida for about two
years. Claxton was developmentally disabled and wheelchair-bound after
being struck in childhood by meningitis and encephalitis. His parents
cared for him, and he lived in an apartment adjoining their neatly kept
house in a forested enclave of southern Ocala.

In 1991, when his family
was living in Washington state, Claxton was charged with first-degree
child molestation over an incident involving a caregiver's 9-year-old
daughter. He was 24 at the time but, according to the Marion County
Sheriff's Office, had the mental capacity of a 10- or 12-year-old. He
served 27 months in prison.

Claxton noticed bright yellow, laminated signs displaying his
picture, date of birth, address and the words "child rapist"
hanging on power poles in his neighbourhood. A county commissioner
proposed posting such information in the community, but Sheriff Ed Dean
rejected the idea. After seeing the signs, Claxton called the sheriff's
office and said that he felt

"extremely scared and feels that
people in the neighbourhood are now out to possibly hurt him."

"Once he made these type statements our deputies took this man
into custody under the Baker Act law and transported him to a local
mental health facility for evaluation," Marion County Sheriff's
Capt. Denis Strow said. "He was later released."

Claxton's parents found him dead of an apparent overdose with one of
the 'child rapist' flyers by his side. Jane Claxton blames County
Commissioner Randy Harris, who proposed the flyers, for her son's death,
according to a report.

"Just don't get on the bandwagon," she
said. "There's going to be other (deaths) if Randy Harris has his
way."
"He hasn't been in trouble for 18 years, and he's
branded for life."

Harris said sex offenders need to take responsibility for their
actions.

"I don't blame his death to the signs," he said,
adding he was undeterred in his quest to alert people to sex offenders
living in their neighbourhoods.

Dean said it is an example that police work should be left to
authorities.

"We need to keep calm, do the right thing," Dean
said. "Not go overboard with it. Protect our children. Use all of
the resources we can, but not stir a community into frenzy."

Claxton's death follows the high-profile arrests of sex offenders in
the separate killings of two Florida girls less than seven weeks apart.
State lawmakers have responded by passing a bill to require lifetime
supervision of some child sex offenders. State law allows for flyers to
be printed and distributed, but altering the signs or flyers is against
the law.

"It is a violation of the law," Strow said. "And
should we find who perpetrated it, I'm sure it is a case that would be
reviewed by the state's attorney office to see if they wish to pursue
it."

(2)

Operation Ore(Cost
to UK taxpayer??), was a British police
initiative that commenced in 1999 following information received from US
law enforcement, which was intended to prosecute thousands of users of a
website reportedly featuring child pornography. It was the United
Kingdom's biggest ever computer crime investigation.

In 2005, computer evidence used against 7,272 people in the UK
accused of being paedophiles had been founded on falsehoods. The
misleading 'evidence', which claimed that every user of a Texas porn
portal had to click on a banner advertising child porn to access illegal
websites, was withdrawn in 2006.

'It's specifically not alleged that the accused would have seen a
banner saying "Click Here Child Porn",' a British court was
told.

The climb-down came too late for many: between then and now, the
death toll of those who have killed themselves under pressure of the
investigations in 'Operation Ore' has risen to 39.

7,250 suspects were
identified,

4,283 homes were searched,

3,744 individuals were arrested,

1,848 were charged,

1,451 were convicted,

493 cautioned, and

140
children removed from suspected dangerous situations.

Hundreds of police raids across Britain found no evidence that many
suspects possessed, or were even interested in, child pornography.
Because of the huge volume of computers and disks seized for
examination, police high-tech crime capabilities were reportedly
crippled for years.

Not only did police evidence in Operation Ore pretend users had asked
for 'child porn', but that many of the Britons who have been publicly
branded 'dangerous paedophiles' were merely victims of systematic credit
card fraud - some of it run by a Mafia crime family - and had never
subscribed to the websites.

Simon Bunce was one of the many arrested as part of the Operation Ore
investigation.

"In March 2004 I was arrested, my house was searched, and the
Hampshire police seized my Compac handheld computer, numerous flash
memory devices, compact disks and floppy disks. I was arrested because
of evidence from the USA that someone, using my name and previous
address, subscribed to an Internet pornography website via a gateway
site called Landslide Productions Inc. in May 1999. This website was
widely reported in the UK media under the name of Operation Ore.

On 9 June 2004, I firmly believe that I was followed to work by
officers working for the Hampshire Police. Subsequently, on 23 June 2004,
I was sacked without notice or compensation by my employer, Interxion
Carried Hotels Limited of London. A breach of contract action has been
launched against my former employer because they did not follow the
correct procedure.

Prior to this I was earning £ 120,000 per year plus benefits. Last
year (2006), I earned just under £ 30,000. My house was searched again
in September 2004, and the Hampshire police seized another computer that
my wife and I used.

Later in September 2004, I received a letter from the Hampshire
police stating that as there was no evidence of any wrongdoing found on
any of my computers or on any of the hundreds of flash drives, CD disks
or floppy disks they had seized during their two searches they were not
taking any further action in my case. They told me to come and collect
my property or they would dispose of it.

There have been 39 reported suicides of innocent victims who could
not bear the shame and humiliation of similar police accusations under
Operation Ore. The unofficial number of suicide deaths of suspects on
bail is likely to be in the region of 200.

I appreciate that by now publicising what happened to me in this
manner this may cause me more pain and suffering. I take heart in the
fact that this further suffering will be nothing compared to the
ongoing, lifelong suffering of the bereaved who lost innocent loved ones
as a result of similar police actions. If my public stand gives those
bereaved families just one crumb of comfort, then I will consider that
my job will have been done.

We, as a family, have been financially crippled by the actions of the
police. Our family home is on the market because of the financial
situation we now find ourselves in and we will be moving shortly.

What the UK media seem not to have been told at the time Operation
Ore was launched was that there was evidence of widespread credit card
fraud associated with the database from Landslide. Only now is this
information starting to come out."

Suicide In Prison/ccc; example:

After his months alone in cell, Scot Noble Payne, 43, finished 20
pages of letters, describing to loved ones the decrepit conditions of
the prison where he was serving time for molesting a child. Then Payne
used a razor blade to slice two 3-inch gashes in his throat. Guards
found his body in the cell's shower, with the water still running.

"Try to comfort my mum too and try to get her to see that I am
truly happy again," he wrote his uncle. "I tell you, it sure
beats having water on the floor 24/7, a smelly pillow case, sheets with
blood stains on them and a stinky towel that hasn't been changed since
they caught me."

Payne's suicide came seven months after he was sent to the squalid
privately run Texas prison by Idaho authorities trying to ease inmate
overcrowding in their own state. His death exposed what had been Idaho's
standard practice for dealing with inmates sent to out-of-state prisons:
Out of sight, out of mind.

It also raised questions about a company hired to operate prisons in
15 states, despite reports of abusive guards and terrible sanitation.

Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Associated Press through
an open-records request show Idaho did little monitoring of out-of-state
inmates, despite repeated complaints from prisoners, their families and
a prison inspector.

More than 140,000 U.S. prison beds are in private
hands, and inmates' rights groups allege many such penitentiaries
tolerate deplorable conditions and skimp on services to increase
profits.

"They cut corners because the bottom line is making
money," said Caylor Rolling, prison program director at Partnership
for Safety and Justice in Portland, a group that promotes prison
alternatives.

Payne was placed in solitary confinement because he escaped from the
prison in December by scaling a fence and eluding capture for a week. He
was among Idaho inmates sent to the prison in Spur, Texas, run by a
Florida-based company called the GEO Group. The business operates more
than 50 prisons across the United States as well as in Australia and
South Africa. Soon after Payne's suicide, the Idaho Department of
Correction's health care director inspected the prison and declared it
the worst facility he had ever seen.

Don Stockman called Payne's cell
unacceptable and the rest of the Dickens County Correctional Center
"beyond repair."

"The physical environment ... would have
only enhanced the inmate's depression that could have been a major
contributing factor in his suicide," he wrote in a report on
Payne's death.

Stockman said the warden at Dickens ruled "based on
verbal and physical intimidation" and that guards showed no concern
for the living conditions.

The Idaho prisoners were sent to Dickens in August from another
GEO-run Texas prison after complaints about abuse by guards. But in the
following seven months, Idaho sent an inspector to Texas only once. That
inspection found major problems, including virtually no substance-abuse
treatment, and a complete lack of Idaho-sanctioned anger-management
classes and pre-release programs. There's no evidence the inspector's
recommendations were followed. And no one from Idaho visited the prison
again until after Payne's suicide.

The complaints have not hurt GEO’s balance sheet, however. It
reported profits of $ 30 million in 2006, four times the amount reported
in 2005.

Murder In Society Caused By Vigilante; example:

A day after two sex offenders were found shot to death in separate
towns in Maine and a suspect killed himself on a bus in Boston,
investigators said they still didn’t know how or if the three men were
connected.

"We don’t have a link, we don’t have a connection,
and we have really more questions than we have answers as to what
sparked this violence," Maine Public Safety Department spokesman
Stephen McCausland said.

Joseph L. Gray, 57, of Milo, Maine, and William Elliott, 24, of
Corinth, both registered sex offenders, were found shot to death Sunday
in their towns, 25 miles apart, police said.

A man identified by police as Stephen A. Marshall, 20, was seen
driving away from the scene of Elliott’s shooting. Police did not know
if Marshall knew either of the shooting victims. Almost 12 hours later,
police pulled over a bus from Maine approaching Boston’s South
Station. As officers boarded the bus, Marshall pulled out a .45-caliber
handgun and shot himself in the head, said David Procopio, spokesman for
the Suffolk County district attorney.

Marshall, who lived in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, had come to Houlton,
Maine, for the first time to meet his father, McCausland said. Marshall
had been driving his father’s pickup, but the father hadn’t realized
his son and truck were missing, McCausland said. Marshall also took two
handguns and a rifle from his father, the spokesman said, plus a laptop
computer.

The two men were among 34 names Marshall had looked up on the
state Web site, said Stephen McCausland of the Maine Department of
Public Safety. Investigators said they discovered he visited the Web
site because he typed in his name to receive extra information online,
including street addresses.

Gray’s name was posted on a state Web site because he had moved to
Maine after a Massachusetts conviction for sexual assault on a child
under 14, McCausland said.

Elliott’s conviction was for having sex
with a girl who was under the legal age, he said.

After the killings,
Maine State Police removed a list of 2,200 sex offenders from the Web
site as a precaution, McCausland said. "It will go back on line,
absolutely," he said.

All states have sex offender registries and
almost all of them post the information on line, according to Blake
Harrison of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maine’s Web
site contained offenders’ names, addresses, identifying
characteristics and place of employment, as well as photographs.

A sex offender registry Web site in Washington state was cited in the
deaths of two convicted child rapists last summer. Michael Anthony
Mullen, 35, said he targeted the pair after finding them on Whatcom
County’s online list. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree
murder and was sentenced to more than 44 years in prison.

Murder In Society Caused By Publ serv. …; example:

A 22-year-old Huntington's disease victim who was denied a bed in a
state health care facility because he was a registered sex offender
choked to death today at a Delaware mental health clinic. Family members
said they were told that Joseph Heverin, whose muscle control had
deteriorated to the point where he often fell and had to be put in a
wheelchair, choked to death on a sandwich at Dover Behavioral Health
Systems.

"He was dead when he got to the hospital," said Heverin's
brother, Paul Vrem.

Vrem said he learned of his brother's death after
driving to Dover Behavioral to pick him up for a dental appointment.

"They told me that he had choked on a grilled cheese sandwich and
that they were administering Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation," Vrem
said.

Colin Faulkner, director of public safety for Kent County, said
paramedics were dispatched to Dover Behavioral Health shortly before
12:30 p.m. in response to a report of a person choking.

"It would
appear that he went into cardiac arrest, full arrest, as the result of
an unresolved choking incident," Faulkner said.

Jay Lynch, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Social
Services, confirmed Heverin's death.

Heverin's mother, Dianne Vrem, said Dover Behavioral officials kept
family members in a waiting room until Heverin had been taken away by
ambulance, and that Kent General officials also refused her request to
be with her son.

"I just wanted to hold him and let him know that
his mom was there," she said.

Heverin was the subject of an Associated Press article describing the
bureaucratic limbo in which his criminal past and his disease - an
incurable, degenerative neurological disorder that also killed his
father and other family members - had left him.

Officials at Dover Behavioral, a short-stay psychiatric facility
where Heverin had been admitted for treatment of depression, had sought
and received court permission to discharge him, arguing that he is not
mentally ill. He remained at the facility as his guardianship case
worked its way through the court system.

Even though a court declared Heverin "a disabled person"
who was "unable to act in his own best interest," health and
social service officials refused to place him in state-run long-term
care facility. They argued that he was neither developmentally disabled
nor mentally ill. The primary reason for their opposition, however, was
that Heverin was a registered sex offender. He had twice been convicted
of unlawful sexual contact, incidents that his supporters believe
stemmed from the effects of Huntington's disease, a hereditary disorder
that has been linked with inappropriate sexual behavior.

Dover Behavioral officials said they had tried repeatedly for more
than a year to find placement options for Heverin, but no facility was
willing to take him. Kristopher Starr, an attorney appointed as a
fact-finder in Heverin's guardianship case, submitted a report
excoriating state officials for refusing to place Heverin in a skilled
nursing facility, at least not until he is "bedridden."

"They finally got what they wanted; they won't have to deal with
the problem anymore," Paul Vrem said.

Murder In Society Caused By Family; example:

John DeBack Jr. shot his uncle Raymond DeBack with the rifle he had
been using to shoot at squirrels, according to testimony given by a
Racine County Sheriff's Department investigator in Wisconsin. John
DeBack is on trial for the April 2004 murder of Raymond DeBack. Raymond
DeBack was shot twice, once in the chest and once in the head, on April
16, 2004. A fisherman found his body in the Fox River in Kenosha County
the next morning.

Raymond DeBack was a convicted child molester who had been released
from prison about nine months before he was shot. He then moved into a
trailer a few feet away from the trailer John DeBack lived in. According
to testimony, John DeBack told investigators his uncle sexually abused
him when he was a boy, and the abuse "haunted him."

After several interviews with investigators, John DeBack confessed to
killing his uncle and told them what had happened that day. In the
morning, he brought his father to a friend's home so they could travel
together to the family's property in Adams County. After dropping his
father off, John DeBack stopped at a store and bought a 12-pack of
Milwaukee's Best Ice beer.

Raymond DeBack was not around when he got back home, and John DeBack
started drinking about 1 p.m. His uncle returned, and they argued. John
DeBack told investigators that he gets angry when he drinks. As he drank
that day, he told them he got angry with his uncle.

"He said his
uncle was giving him a hard time because he was drinking and shooting
squirrels out of season without a license," said Racine County
Sheriff's Investigator Chris Schmaling.

Sheriff's Investigator Keith Dobesh said DeBack told him his uncle
was

"grilling me about drinking and gave me the riot act about
being better than me."

At 4 p.m. Raymond DeBack went to work at a
nearby farm, where he was a farm hand. John DeBack told investigators he
took his rifle and followed his uncle through the woods toward the farm.

"To be honest, I was so damn pissed I had the .22 in my hand. I was
going to shoot him and I don't know why I didn't shoot him then."

John DeBack said he started to think about what could happen if he
killed his uncle: that he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
DeBack turned around and went home, where he sat drinking beer and
holding the rifle on his lap until Raymond DeBack returned a few hours later.

When his uncle returned,
John DeBack said they again fought. He said his uncle was talking about
how messed up he was, and that he got angry. John DeBack said that
Raymond DeBack was complaining about the $ 25 weekly fee he had to pay
for sex offender counseling that wasn't working.

"I just got up and
shot him. I just shot him," said John DeBack.

Investigators said he first shot Raymond DeBack in the chest, then,
because the rifle only had one round in it, he went inside and got a
second gun. His uncle was lying on the ground, not moving and not making
noise. John DeBack took aim at his head and fired again. John DeBack
said he fired the second shot because

"I was still mad at him and
wanted to make sure he was dead."

Investigators testified that John DeBack said that he wished his
uncle was dead and that he wished his father had shot him years earlier.
They also said he had told them it was hard for him to live so close to
the man who had abused him as a child.

On cross examination, John DeBack's attorney, talked about how John
DeBack Sr. had found gay porn in Raymond DeBack's trailer.

"Their
belief was it was a slippery slope".

"Once he began using gay
porn again, he would molest another boy. John DeBack witnessed his
father confront Raymond about the porn and the fear he would molest more
boys. (His father) threatened Raymond's life while John DeBack was
present. (John DeBack Sr.) told Raymond if he molested another boy he
would shoot him in the head."

Murder In Society Caused By Other; example:

So is this what it finally takes for us to hear the muffled cries of
the homeless - an ex-con dead in the snow because it's against the law
for a sex offender to huddle up at either of two Grand Rapids missions?

Thomas Pauli didn't choose to die alone in the cold. He apparently froze
to death because of a crime he committed nearly 20 years ago, and a law
that's dogged him ever since his release from prison.

In the days prior to the discovery of his body at a recycling
operation in the 600 block of South Division Avenue, he reportedly
attempted to score a bed at either or both the Guiding Light Mission and
Mel Trotter Ministries, just blocks away.

But officials at both
facilities reluctantly acknowledge they would have turned him away
because registered sex offenders can't reside for even one night within
1,000 feet of a school, in this case, Catholic Central High. Never mind
that school isn't in session during the hours a guy like Pauli would
have been snoozing away on a warm cot. Or that ex-cons, or anyone else,
are more likely a threat to a neighbourhood when they have nowhere to go
... when they are desperate.

The problem is compounded by the fact that
both missions are too near a pair of public parks, and that Mel Trotter
houses women and children. All those elements also render the missions
lawfully unable to accept offenders. The missions aren't to blame. They
risk fines or even being shut down if they don't comply with the law.

But it's a law that needs changing. And we need to re-examine our
collective level of commitment to a part of society that, to most of us,
matters least.

Asks Bill Shaffer, an officer with Guiding Light:

"How do we
treat the unlovable?"

"I couldn't sleep last night thinking
about Thomas Pauli freezing to death outside," said a tearful Marge
Palmerlee, executive director at Degage Ministries, which cares for
folks like Pauli who live and frequent the Heartside area on downtown's
fringe.

"Who can sleep at night, thinking of these people outside. It's
just unbelievable."

Murder In Prison/ccc Caused By Vigilante; example:

The father of a Florence inmate killed with a homemade prison shank
has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the state.

The prisoner,
William Lee Harris, 45, was classified as a nonviolent inmate on a
three-year drug charge at Arizona State Prison. According to the
complaint filed Sept. 10, Harris was falsely labelled by a prison
employee as a sex offender and then improperly housed with a Class 5
inmate - the most violent type.

Leslie Rakestraw, the lawyer for the
Harris family, said the claim will ask for $ 2.5 million in damages.

"We would be willing to settle for that, or less even," she
said. "But we have gotten absolutely no response from the
state."

The complaint cites the death as

"a direct and
proximate result of the negligence of the employees of the Department of
Corrections."

Calls to the Arizona Department of Corrections were not returned. An
internal investigation by the department noted that prison staff made
mistakes that led to the death of Harris. After the slaying, 12 prison
employees were reprimanded or fired.

Michael Gaston, 23, is accused of slaying Harris within hours after
he moved into Gaston’s cell on Sept. 17, 2006. Prison records show
Gaston stabbed Harris with a nine-inch shank, which was found protruding
from his chest as he lay covered in blood. Gaston was serving a prison
sentence at the time for killing a man over a car loan. The prison
report indicates that a guard who quit the department soon after the
incident, falsely told inmates that Harris was a sex offender.

"The state has 20 days to file an answer," she said.
"We get lots of delays based on technicalities. They will do
anything to keep us from getting our trial it seems."

Murder In Prison/ccc Caused By Publ. serv.; example:

Nancy Morais, president of the Family and Friends of Committed
Victims, an advocacy group for the detainees of the Florida Civil
Commitment Centre (FCCC), cited several medical complaints from inmates.

One refers to Scott Gartley, who died in the facility in 2003.
Gartley told Morais he had gone to the infirmary the day before to seek
treatment for a

"pain shooting up his arm into his back,"
Morais said. "He was offered Tylenol and a bed in the
infirmary," Morais said. "He wanted to go to the emergency
room, and they denied him."

The next day, Morais said she again talked to Gartley.

"He was
very short of breath," Morais said. "I told him he needed to
get back to the infirmary and tell them he needed to go the emergency
room and get help. "That never happened and he died that night in
his sleep," Morais said.

No mercy was offered to George Capaldo either, a 75-year-old sex
offender who became bedridden with cancer. The disease had progressed to
the point it required surgical castration, Morais said. Capaldo was left
untended except for one visit per day by an orderly, Morais said. The
rest of the time, he would have lay in soiled clothes, were it not for
her son, who tried to help him, she said.

"We fought intensely to get this man released to his
family," Morais said. "He was no threat to himself or his
family. He was 75 years old, dying of cancer, castrated, couldn't walk,
and couldn't lift his head off his pillow."

The FCCC finally won approval to release Capaldo to a hospice, but he
died in the ambulance on the way.

In 2006, Vermont District Court Judge Edward Cashman sentenced Mark
Hulett to the minimum: 60 days in jail, probation predicated on
compliance with 21 conditions, including participation in
community-based treatment.

Hulett, 34, had pled guilty to two counts of
sexual assault of a friend's daughter when she was 6 to 10 years old.
Defending his decision, the judge explained that Hulett was assessed at
low risk of re-offending and was not going to get treatment in jail.
Cashman thought Hulett needed treatment more than lengthy incarceration,
which would only make him more dangerous. Then the judge averred that he
no longer believes in punishment:

"Anger corrodes the soul,"
he said.

Although none of the critics knows exactly what Hulett did or how
often he did it, Cashman [the judge] was besieged by condemnation. Calls poured into
Vermont governor, Jim Douglas, who issued a statement eviscerating
Cashman and calling for sentencing reform. Republican legislators
resolved to impeach the judge. The national conservative media and
blogosphere had joined the mob.

Bill O'Reilly dubbed Cashman: "the
worst judge in the USA."

A blog called Imago Dei pointed to Cashman,
a devout Catholic, as "proof of the existence of evil."

A
contributor to the Wall Street Journal's opinion site called him proof
that Vermont is insane.

On Vermont Public Radio's
"Switchboard," Democratic House Speaker Gaye Symington
declared that "as a mother and a citizen," she, too, was
appalled by Cashman's decision. She plugged the House's forthcoming Safe
Communities bill, which may contain longer sentences for sex offenders.

It's hard to say how news of the Hulett case got out. But you can't
understand its resonance without considering the mega-decibel amplifier
created by Douglas's two-year campaign to get tough on sex offenders.
What the governor wants most is a law allowing "civil
commitment" of "sexually violent predators" - the
indefinite psychiatric incarceration of people who have completed their
prison sentences but are deemed likely to commit another crime. Among
his other wishes are longer sentences and tighter probationary
restrictions; posting more ex-offenders on the Sex Offender Registry
website and availing the public of their addresses.

None of this is a response to a real problem

Rather, it's a strategy
to embarrass "soft-on-crime" Democrats and win votes for
Republicans.

After all, Vermont ranks 48th among the states in crime,
44th in rapes. As for sex crimes against children, thanks to good
treatment programs, Vermont has some of the lowest re-offense rates in
the country: In 1995, Vermont reported after-treatment arrests at

7
percent for pedophiles,

3 percent for incest perpetrators, and

3 percent
for those who had committed "hands-off" crimes such as
exhibitionism.

Nevertheless, last session the lawmakers passed a
Sexually Violent Predator designation, ready for deployment should civil
commitment become law. And the speaker promises more.

Fear, both public
and political, is winning the day. But if fear is the greatest political
motivator, it is also the worst basis for policy. A tougher sex-offender
law will not make Vermont's communities safer. Indeed, it could make
them more dangerous.

Here's why:

1.

Such laws put resources where the problem isn't. All but about 7
percent of sex crimes against children are committed by Dad, Mom's
boyfriend or a close family friend. Sex offender registries do nothing
for these victims, who already know where the released perpetrator is.
Requirements that ex-offenders stay away from schools and playgrounds
are likewise unnecessary. Where molestation is concerned, kids are
safest in public.

2.

Sex criminals reform, and treatment works. Even for people who
have committed many crimes, the one they're caught in is usually the
last. Large studies in the U.S. and Canada have found that

about 13
percent of sex offenders are rearrested for similar crimes, compared
with

74 percent of all other prisoners.

"Being handcuffed and
hauled away from decent society is a shattering experience for
anyone," an ex-offender told Eric Lotke, former research and policy
director of the Justice Policy Institute. "But it is all the more
electrifying and soul-stripping when the offence is as intimate and
shameful a secret as is a sex crime." That memory "stops most
of us from ever doing it again."

3.

In a free society, you don't lock people up for crimes you think
they might commit. Anyway, it's almost impossible to know.

Not to worry,
says the governor. Only the baddest of the bad - 19 ex-cons, tops - will
end up in the bin. But most states have exceeded their estimates by
hundreds, even thousands, using civil commitment as a backdoor to longer
sentences.

Vermont's new statute sounds reassuringly stringent.

"The standard of proof . . . shall be clear and convincing evidence
that the convicted sex offender suffers from a mental abnormality or
personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in
predatory, sexually violent offenses."

Such risk prediction,
though, is anything but clear and convincing.

Notwithstanding its
definition in psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,
"personality disorder" is a diagnosis about as precise as
"a real fruitcake." A "mental abnormality" is as
common as anorexia. And depending on whom you talk to,
"paedophilia" can refer to

a 40-year-old who rapes a toddler
or

an 8-year-old playing doctor with his 5-year-old sister.

Before
committing a prisoner, courts usually ask, "Did he cooperate with
treatment in prison? Does he show remorse?"

According to Canadian
Solicitor General Karl Hanson [*], who conducted the widest, most
sophisticated analysis yet of recidivism risks, neither of these says a
lot about an offender's future behaviour. One thing that does predict
re-offense, Hanson finds, is youth: a person under 25 is far more likely
to assault someone than an older person, and the compulsion lessens with
age. Thus, very long prison sentences, even as an alternative to civil
commitment, are a bad idea relocated -- a waste of money, and lives.

4.

"The treatment research shows that the
best way to change antisocial behaviour is to normalize life," says
Lotke.

Offender websites and community notification of neighbours,
landlords and employers, coupled with requirements that registrants
report their every move to the police, do the opposite.

The U.S. Justice
Department names "lifestyle instability" as a big contributor
to re-offending. In other words, as Robert Longo, a therapist and former
director of Vermont's Safer Society Program, told me,

"You ban
somebody from the community, he has no friends, he feels bad about
himself, and you reinforce the very problems that contribute to the sex
abuse behaviour in the first place. You make him a better sex
offender."

5.

Community notification encourages violence.

"Stronger sex
offender laws give tools to parents and concerned citizens so they can
be more aware of the location of convicted sex offenders, especially
sexually violent predators," Douglas proclaims.

And what are we to
do with these "tools?" Gather the good old boys to patrol the
offender's place with shotguns? That's what's happened nationwide:
harassment, assault, arson.

Imprisonment does two things: It punishes, and it protects the
community by keeping bad guys off the street. A third function, in
Vermont at least, is rehabilitation, which protects the community by
helping ex-convicts create lives beyond crime.

'A tyranny ... for the good of its
victims ...'

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under
robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s
cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated;
but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end,
for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be
more likely to go to Heaven, yet, at the same time, likelier to make a
Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult.

To be
‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not
regard as disease, is to be put on a level of those who have not yet
reached the age of reason, or those who never will; to be classed with
infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

C. S. Lewis, author
of God in the Dock, 1948.

'... use falsehood for the basest purposes'

"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in
itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of
credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily
corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than
consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of
their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small
lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but
would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never
come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not
believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so
infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be
brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will
continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

For the
grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has
been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this
world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people
know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes."

Adolf
Hitler, Mein Kampf

'Prejudice ... is
basically an inter-group phenomenon ...'

"The inherent superiority of certain groups to other groups is
an important foundation of prejudice belief systems. Prejudice results
from the human potential for misconception and prejudgement. Prejudice
is an antipathy based upon a faulty, inflexible generalisation.

Prejudice may be felt or expressed, it may be directed towards a group
as a whole, or it may be directed towards an individual because he is a
member of that group.

The net effect of prejudice is to place the object
of prejudice at some disadvantage, not merited by his or her misconduct.

It is clear that prejudice, while it is often expressed individually, is
basically an inter-group phenomenon, the malignant manifestations of
which accrue to individuals only in the context of their membership in
groups."

Gordon Allport, author of The Nature of Prejudice, 1954.

'... the only purpose of the proceedings was
to convict him ...'

"They put a series of questions to him with the correctness and
scrupulous care that is used with all defendants and is supposed to
eliminate human fallibility. These questions were like all questions
posed in a courtroom: they ignored the essence of living truth – in
fact, they made it impossible for any such essence ever to be discovered
– and their sole purpose was to provide a conduit down which the court
officials wanted to channel any questions from a defendant so as to
bring him straight to the end of the inquiry – conviction. The moment
he began to say anything not conducive to this end, they would simply
remove the conduit and let the flow go anywhere.

Besides that, he felt
what all defendants feel in court, a sense of bafflement that left him
wondering why he was being asked all these questions. He had a distinct
feeling they were patronising him and just going through the motions of
civility by providing a conduit that was nothing more than a subterfuge.

He knew that he was in their power; their power and that alone had
brought him here; their power and that alone gave them the right to make
him answer their questions, and the only purpose of the proceedings was
to convict him. It followed then, since they had all the power and a
strong desire to convict him, there was no need for the subterfuge of
questions and answers in a courtroom. It was perfectly obvious that the
questioning was bound to lead to a guilty verdict."

Leo Tolstoy,
author of War and Peace, 1868.

'... telling the truth ...'

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a
revolutionary act."

George Orwell.

'... success rates ... less than 0.5%'

"These methods included: aversion therapy and masturbatory
satiation, designed to change feelings of attraction by associating the
attraction with boredom, revulsion, fear, shame, or physical pain,
chemical castration using the drug Apomorphine which usually led to
violent illness.

Reconditioning success rates from four studies are all
less than 0.5%."

American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry, 1999.

'... the effectiveness of reconditioning methods is no more successful
...'

"The few well-constructed studies have found
that the effectiveness of reconditioning methods is no more successful
with the elimination of paedosexuality than it was with the elimination
of homosexuality."

American Medical Association, 1987.

'... they would be made Normal. But it wasn’t
happening ...'

"They also discovered that for the life of them they could never
beat the queer out of Sammy. Surely, if one of these faggots was just
pummelled enough, like over and over and over, the Gay would somehow
spill out of them and they would be made Normal. But it wasn’t
happening, so the bullies gave up and returned to the more entertaining
tradition of humiliation via taunting, ridiculing, and calling Sammy
names."

Michael Moore, author of Here Comes Trouble, 2011.

'... if
we ... proclaim that only our inclinations
are ‘normal’ and all others abnormal, perverse and disgusting, we
become ... immoral.'

"Now there is nobody whose sexual appetite or impulse is excited
or provoked by every human being he meets. Physical properties,
personality characteristics which to one individual are highly exciting
may leave another completely indifferent, or may even seem repellent.

This fixation will appear to the individual himself as something
natural, innate, an inseparable part of his being. One perceives it as
having been there from the beginning; it is impossible to imagine
oneself without it. This, however, poses a major problem to human
society.

A man may be quite able to conceive that his neighbour
gets sexually excited by things other than he does himself, but this
doesn’t mean that he understands it, nor be able to discover
similar feelings in himself and by so doing be able to vividly empathize
with his neighbour’s feelings. A sexual attraction to which someone is
not himself sensible remains mysterious and strange. Fantasy fails to
help us.

This helps explain why an overwhelming majority of paedophiles
and homophiles, though belonging to a small group which is rejected and
often cruelly persecuted and tortured by the society in which they live,
still don’t want to get rid of their ‘tendencies’. Fantasy lets
him down; ultimate change is perceived as an irreparable loss: he will
lose what he loves, and in exchange will get something he cannot
conceive of as being equally worthy of love.

Thus we remain
circumscribed by our knowledge that other people feel differently from
the way we do. To forget this is to be narrow-minded and stupid. But if
we raise such stupidity to dogma and proclaim that only our inclinations
are ‘normal’ and all others abnormal, perverse and disgusting, we
become intolerant and immoral. Doing this, we base our ethics upon our
lack of imagination."

Ballad of the Reading Gaol

I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life, - And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff - With a most evil fan.

This too I know - and wise it were
If each could know the same -
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison-air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad, - And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
- Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.

The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales - Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
- Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one's heart by night.

With midnight always in one's heart,
- And twilight in one's cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near
- To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door - Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.

Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
- And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart - May Lord Christ enter in?

And thus we rust Life's iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
- In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.

Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol (extract), 1897.

'Only the human mind
invents categories ...'

"The world is not divided into sheep and goats. Not all things
are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that
nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind
invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes.
The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.
The sooner we learn this concerning sexual behaviour the sooner we shall
reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex."